What is Love?
by pearlchavez
Summary: Love isn't like the movies. If anything love is the hardest thing to find - even harder than Osama Bin Laden. They found him, but not everyone finds that special person...


**What is Love?**

I suppose every student in their time has to answer a question like this for an assignment and to be honest, I don't really know why. How can someone answer a question like that when they've never felt it before? It's not that I won't feel it, but right now it's as alien to me as...well, an alien.

I guess I have an idea of what love is. I know it's not as easy and beautiful as Sleeping Beauty or Snow White would argue and it's definitely not as complicated and consuming as Bella Swan would have us believe. I'd like to think love - especially true love - is like the old couple at the beginning of the movie _UP_. Have you ever seen it? Well, you should. My mother says it's idealistic, but my dad had tears in his eyes and said it reminded him of his grandparents. So, it must be real, right? Maybe that kind of love is for the lucky people, but I don't know. I'd like to think we all have a chance of being that happy.

Love isn't like the movies. Like I said, it definitely can't be that easy, because it doesn't take 90 minutes for someone to find love no matter how much they want it. If anything love is the hardest thing to find - yes, even harder than Osama Bin Laden. They found him in the end, but not everyone finds that special person.

I think there are different kinds of love; there's friend love, family love and platonic love but everyone cares more about romantic love. I think there are different types of that as well. I don't know them all, but I've come across one type.

My mom was reading a novel when I asked her the other night. I think my mom's the smartest person I know - even smarter than my dad. She can answer any question and even if she doesn't have a clue she'll make you think she does.

"What's love?" She echoed when I told her my assignment. For the first time she looked confused. She played with her hair and bit her lip. "That's a hard one."

"Why?"

"What's love to you might not be love to someone else," she replied and she sounded smart again. "Someone once said that 'love is becoming a blank that lovers must fill in themselves'."

Mum is always quoting things like that - she likes bringing up a man called Karl Marx a lot. I don't know what he did, but he definitely should have considered dying his beard the same colour as his hair.

"What about dad and his girlfriends?" I asked and I really should have expected the snort that came from mum. What I didn't expect was the way she looked at the wall - as if she was trying to hide something.

"That's a great example of what I said," she sounded bitter, but she always sounds bitter when she's talking about dad's girlfriends. Something about him being a 'dramatic' actor and thinking he's entitled to girls like people are entitled to free healthcare.

"Dad loves a lot of people."

"Darling, he doesn't love them," she shook her head. "He just likes them an awful lot."

"Do you think you and dad would ever get back together?"

"Oh sweetie," she shook her head and put her arm around me. "Your dad and I are so different now. I have a job where people depend on me and they don't want to think of me as a man's wife - especially an actor's wife. Plus, actors' wives can't have a brain, didn't you know that?"

"Did he love you?" I've asked her before, but I couldn't remember what she said and I wanted to quote her.

"I think he did."

I know he definitely did. Once, when he was drunk and I was staying over he said he'd only ever made love to my mother and that everyone else had been just sex. Taking away the disgusting images it sounded like love to me.

My parents aren't married and they've never been close. Well, mom admitted dad did propose to her, but only because it was the 'decent' thing to do in their situation. Mom got pregnant with me when she was sixteen after my dad 'made love' to her and she said she refused his proposal, because they were so young and still had so much to do. Dad hates admitting that she's right, but she is. They both know mom wouldn't be working in TV and dad wouldn't be making millions of dollars making 'important' movies if they'd gotten married when they were sixteen.

"What's love?"

"Why are you asking me that?" Dad asked and he was watching 'Reservoir Dogs' or something manly like that.

"The school wants to know."

"They should be asking you about apartheid or Nazism."

"What?"

"Never mind," he shook his head. We sat silently for a while in his huge living room. It was my weekend with dad and we'd just finished our huge pizza and we were about to watch a film on his huge plasma screen 3D television. "It's like that old couple in _UP_, remember?"

"I already said that so you have to think of something else."

"I don't know," he shrugged, but he did. Mom says that dad knows everything there is about love - or at least his version of it. "It's definitely not what I do anyway."

"You don't love all your girlfriends?"

"I don't have that much love in me," he smirked, because he was disgusting sometimes. "No, I definitely haven't made love to a lot of people in my life."

"Why have you never made love to mom again?"

"She wouldn't let me!" He protested and he was definitely right about that. When mom reads about another model telling her secrets about dad in the paper she just sighs and says that's why she would never go there again.

"Would you say what you and mom had was love then?"

"Definitely."

He didn't even hesitate when he said it and he had the same look in his eyes mom had when I asked her. I didn't know what that look meant, but now I do.

"Do you think you would get back together?"

"Oh kid," he shook his head and put his arm around me. "Your mom and I are so different now. I need a lot of attention and she's so smart and talented - she can't be my wife if she's a smart woman. Don't you read the magazines?"

"Do you think she loved you?".

"I think she did."

She definitely did. I know, because when mom gets drunk - which is maybe once a year - she sometimes cries and tells whoever's listening about how she'd never forget her first love. She slurs her words and says she was tempted to marry dad, but that she thought of how bad everything would be. It turns out she was right, because they broke up when they were seventeen and before they became good friends they hated each other for a long time.

At that point I didn't know the type of love I'm referring to. It all became clear to me when mom came to pick me up from dad's. When they saw each other they smiled - it's a special smile they only have for each other - and then they hugged. Dad closed his eyes and held mom tight.

"How are you Munroe?" He asked as if he hadn't seen her in months when it had only been a week.

"I'm very busy and I don't have a moment to myself Cooper," she shook her head. When other people ask she always says 'fine', but she tells dad the truth. "What about you?"

"What I do can be so exhausting sometimes," he smirked. "This one here tells me she wants to go to London this summer."

"Did she now?" Mom shook her head and laughed a little and I wondered why dad's grip on my hand tightened a little. "Maybe next year. I don't have a lot of time and I don't get paid a fortune, you know."

"But I do," dad replied and mom's face turned angry like it does every time dad brings up money. "Why don't you let me pay for it? You deserve a holiday at least."

"If I do that then what separates me from the whor - I mean nice ladies that you always hang out with?" She asked, but she should have just said 'whores' because I know she wanted to.

"You could never be one of those nice ladies," he shook his head and he had never sounded more serious in his life. They were quiet for a few minutes and looking at each other funny. It felt like there was someone else in the room.

"We'd best be going," mom said, clearing her throat.

"Oh yeah," dad nodded, but he sounded disappointed. He hugged me and then kissed my cheek. He has his own special smile for me. "I had a great time this weekend, kid. I'll see you soon."

"Bye dad."

I waited in the car so that mom and dad could talk about me. They never say it's about me, but I know it is. I watched them at the doorstep and I'm glad I did, because I probably would have been stuck quoting _Twilight_ instead of writing the end of this assignment properly.

Mom was about to walk away when dad grabbed her hand. I thought she would have pulled away, but she didn't. Instead she walked back up to him and put her arms around him. They hugged longer this time and dad's eyes were closed tight and I knew mom's were too. They hugged each other like they didn't want to let go. It was mom who pulled away, but I know she didn't want to. She kissed his cheek and then they looked at each other in their own special way before she walked away.

What is love?

I don't know much about love, but I know it doesn't have one definition. It can be easy. I don't know about the easy love, I only know about the hardest kind of love.

If you ask me, the hardest kind of love is the love that's so deep and so obvious. The hardest love is the love that's being held back by something the two people can't describe. The hardest kind of love is knowing it's there, but knowing it's not as simple as saying it.

The hardest kind of love is the love my parents can't make work even though that's all they've ever wanted.


End file.
